College students often turn to family members, professors, and career counselors for advice on launching their careers, but most students don’t have someone they consider a mentor.
A College Pulse survey of 1,500 undergraduates finds that 44% say they have had a mentor they could learn from and turn to for career advice during college, compared to 56% who have not. While there are no notable differences across gender, race, or year, students at private universities are more likely than those at public universities to have a mentor (52% vs. 40%).
Among students who have had at least one mentor, college professors are the most common. Half (49%) of students with a mentor say it’s been a college professor, although students of color are less likely than white students to say so (52% vs. 40% of Black students). Black students, on the other hand, are more likely than white students to say they’ve had a mentor from a college mentorship program (35% vs. 19%).
Half (51%) of students overall say it would be very helpful for their post-graduate employer to have a mentorship program that matched them up with a mentor, while another 42% say it would be somewhat helpful. Students of color are more likely than white students to find mentorship programs very helpful. A majority of Black (65%), Asian (60%), and Hispanic/Latinx (53%) students say it would be very helpful for an employer to have a mentorship program that matched them up with a mentor, compared to 46% of white students.
How helpful would it be for your post-grad employer to have a mentorship program that matched you up with a mentor?
About 3 in 10 (31%) students overall say they would prefer a workplace mentor of the same gender while 65% say it wouldn’t matter to them and 5% are not sure, but female students are more likely than male students to say they would want a mentor of the same gender (41% vs. 18%). Black students are also more likely to want a mentor of the same race/ethnicity. Overall, just 19% of students say they would prefer to have a mentor of the same race or ethnicity as them while 77% say it wouldn’t matter and 4% are not sure. However, a majority (52%) of Black students say they would prefer to have a Black mentor.
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Methodology: This survey was designed and conducted by College Pulse. Interviews were conducted in June among a sample of 1,500 full-time and part-time students attending colleges or universities in the U.S. who are part of College Pulse’s American College Student Panel.
